The age of digital marketing has brought with it a new set of acronyms: SEO, PPC, and SEM. These terms may be familiar to those who are already immersed in the world of digital advertising. For everyone else, though, these three letters might as well be a foreign language. If you’re just starting out in your career or business venture and want to learn about organic vs paid marketing — read on! We’ll walk you through how each one works (and how they compare).

In the battle of paid vs organic marketing, there’s one thing that both sides can agree on: You need a strategy for reaching your target audience. But how you execute that strategy is where things get interesting.

In order to successfully choose which, type of marketing should be part of your plan, it’s important to first understand yourself and your goals as a business owner or influencer.

Before you start spending money on either paid advertising or building an organic following, take some time to define exactly who you want to reach with each channel—and why they should care about what you have to say or sell.

What is organic marketing?

Organic marketing is the practice of using digital platforms to promote products or services. Organic marketing methods rely on search engines and social media platforms to drive traffic to your website. You can run an organic marketing campaign by using any number of tactics: blogging, link building, content creation, social media posts and more.

In contrast to paid advertising (which we’ll discuss below), there’s no cost for running an organic marketing campaign, if you are willing to tackle it yourself. Instead, you’ll need time and effort—but it’s worth it because it costs nothing if you do it yourself!

What is paid marketing?

Paid marketing is when you pay for your ad to be placed. This can be done in a lot of different ways, including on search engines and social media. Paid marketing is often more targeted than organic marketing and therefore can have higher conversion rates. It also tends to cost more than organic marketing because you’re paying directly for each person who sees your ad as opposed to simply having content that anyone can find and read.

 Pros and cons of organic marketing

The main advantage of organic marketing over paid advertising is that it’s more evergreen. With organic marketing, there are no algorithms deciding what content will appear on your page and which users will see it as well as when they’ll see it. This means that when someone searches for something related to your industry or niche and clicks on one of your pages, then chances are there’s a good reason they did so—they were interested in learning more about what you do!

With social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, there are often ways where people can search through their feeds by topic or specific topics (i.e., “fitness” or “food”). If they’re searching within these specific topics and find content related to yours, they’ll likely be interested in seeing what else comes up!

Another major benefit of going with a strategy based around growing organically is sustainability: As long as people continue using those same platforms/apps regularly then every time someone discovers new content from one place, they’ll feel inclined to check out other places too thus giving each platform equal opportunity at being seen by potential customers.

Pros and cons of paid marketing

There are many benefits to using paid marketing:

Paid marketing is more targeted. Paying for ads means you’re paying for views from people who are more likely to be interested in your product. They’ve got their credit card out, so they’re ready to buy and less likely to bounce back from your website after reading just one paragraph.

Paid marketing can be more measurable than organic strategies—you know exactly how many people saw your ad through Facebook or Twitter, how many clicked on it, and how many followed through and bought what you were selling. You also know the lifetime value of each person who has purchased something from you (because they gave up their email address). This helps guide future decisions about where best spend money on advertising dollars (e.g., should we increase Facebook spend or get some front-page Reddit exposure?).

Paid marketing usually drives results faster than organic efforts because paid ads usually appear higher in search results than do organically generated listings, so users see them earlier in the process of researching products/services objectively before making purchasing decisions based purely on price considerations alone rather than factors such as brand trustworthiness or reputation management initiatives, which may take years.

 In the age of digital marketing, organic and paid marketing are two different forms of advertising where the goal is to generate leads.

In the age of digital marketing, organic and paid marketing are two different forms of advertising where the goal is to generate leads. Organic marketing is the long game, while paying for ads on platforms like Facebook or Google have higher costs but produces immediate results.

Paid advertising can be beneficial, but it should not be used as your primary source of leads because when you run out of budget, your ads stop running and you need to bid again in order to get back into the game. On the other hand, if done right, organic marketing will help you build brand awareness over time without having to continuously having to rely on ad platforms. This makes it a great option for start-ups that are still in their initial stages or companies looking for long-term growth opportunities.

Organic marketing is a fantastic way to get the word out about your business, but it can be difficult to scale. Paid marketing is a great option for small businesses who want immediate results and don’t have the time or resources for organic growth. Either way organic and paid marketing should be part of your marketing strategy to achieve optimal results.

If you are looking to start or upgrade your marketing journey, we can help. Crunch Fource helps businesses like yours grow their revenue everyday! Want to be next, reach out to discuss your best-in-class marketing strategy today!